Four flights of nine steps each lead from this elevation to the next lower stage, where are placed tablets to the spirits of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the Year God. On the ground at the end of the four stairways stand vessels of bronze in which are placed the bundles of cloth and sundry animals constituting part of the sacrificial offerings. But of vastly greater importance than these in the matter of burnt-offering is the great furnace, nine feet high, faced with green porcelain, and ascended on three of its sides by porcelain staircases. In this receptacle, erected some hundred feet to the south-east of the altar, is consumed a burnt-offering of a bullock--entire and without blemish--at the yearly ceremony. The slaughter-house of the sacrificial bullock stands east of the North Altar, at the end of an elaborate winding passage, or cloister of 72 compartments, each 10 feet in length. Separated from the Altar to Heaven by a low wall, is a smaller though more conspicuous construction called _Ki-kuh Tan_, or ‘Altar of Prayer for Grain.’ Its proportions and arrangement are somewhat similar to those of the South Altar, but upon its upper terrace rises a magnificent triple-roofed, circular building known to foreigners as the ‘Temple of Heaven.’ This elaborate house of worship, whose surmounting gilded ball rests 100 feet above the platform, was originally roofed with blue, yellow and green tiles, but by Kienlung these colors were changed to blue. When, added to these brilliant hues, we consider the richly carved and painted eaves, the windows shaded by venetians of blue-glass rods strung together, and the rare symmetry of its proportions, it is no exaggeration to call this temple the most remarkable edifice in the capital--or indeed in the empire. The native name is _Ki-kien Tien_, or ‘Temple of Prayer for the Year.’ In the interior, the large shrines of carved wood for the tablets correspond to the movable blue wooden huts which on days of sacrifice are put up on the Southern Altar. Here, upon some day following the first of spring (Feb. 6), the Emperor offers his supplications to Heaven for a blessing upon the year. In times of drought, prayer for rain is also made at this altar, the Emperor being obliged to proceed on foot, as a repentant suppliant, to the ‘Hall of Penitent Fasting,’ a distance of three miles. A green furnace for burnt-offerings lies to the south-east of this, as of the North Altar; while in the open park not far from the two and seventy cloisters are seven great stones, said to have fallen from heaven and to secure good luck to the country.